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Field Station Pandora

Avatar: The Exhibition An early model for Jake, a character in the film “Avatar,” is part of this Liberty Science Center show.Credit
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

JERSEY CITY — “Oeri nga kllkxem sìn kxetse!”

One thing I learned at “Avatar: The Exhibition” is how to say that phrase in Na’vi, the language invented for the blue-skinned natives of the moon Pandora in James Cameron’s blockbuster 2009 film. There are also buttons to press that let me practice my Na’vi pronunciations of “palulukan” and “nantang” in case either of those beasts — translated as “thanator” and “viperwolf” — find their way to the Liberty Science Center.

Thankfully, the need will probably never arise, though there are sketches of such creatures here, along with film props like a “soil sample kit” used by scientists exploring Pandora, some 250 trillion miles from Earth; an “exopack atmosphere filtration system” that presumably allows humans to breathe in its poisonous atmosphere; and a glowing model of a Lucinaria fibriata (which the movie’s reference book describes as a herbaceous plant with animal-like intelligence).

There is also a sculptured pair of Na’vi shoes you can try on that are like the ones used by avatars (who have the bodies of the Na’vi but the remote-controlled consciousness of humans enclosed in pods back at headquarters); Na’vi are 1.67 times human size.

What were these objects doing here? What is a traveling exhibition about a science-fiction film doing in a science museum? It might seem unusual, perhaps, but if this show didn’t make it here, a similar one might have.

Science centers have become so large, their budgetary needs so high and their social missions so ambitious that they can seem more like multiplexes than museums. To draw large audiences they must offer blockbuster experiences; to justify a broad financial embrace they must fuel populist nostrums; to maintain cutting-edge reputations they must pull out all the technological stops.

In other words, they have a lot in common with Mr. Cameron’s movie, which didn’t become one of the largest-grossing films of all time (about $2.8 billion) by offering anything less than spectacle, tech innovations and platitudes.

So it was only a matter of time before these phenomena joined forces: why not a science center exhibition about “Avatar”? The movie’s high-tech tale about corporate Earthlings strip-mining a pastoral paradise could keep interest brewing in Mr. Cameron’s plans for sequels; science centers could tap into the film’s audience and mythology, and along the way some science might even come into play.

This might be a little unfair to the Liberty Science Center because no science center readily abandons its mission’s kernel, even if temptations abound. But surely much more might be asked of this material. It was fine when first created by the EMP Museum in Seattle: part of that institution is devoted to science fiction. But taken out of that context it seems forced and frail, despite the frequent genuflection toward science.

Much emphasis, for example, is placed on how the film’s make-believe creatures were shaped by intelligent design. (How would six-legged viperwolves walk, and what advantages come with six limbs? What kind of trees would grow on a surface with 20 percent less gravitational force than Earth’s and an atmosphere 20 percent more dense?)

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An interactive exhibit explains bioluminescence.Credit
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

There is also a light table that lets us place cards with plant and animal names on its touch screen, sprouting images and information we can explore. And in keeping with the techy-toy approach, there are design-your-own-plant computer screens, whose elementary menus don’t seem to be teaching too many scientific principles but are cute enough.

Actually the accouterments of science (including a notebook supposedly filled with observations by Sigourney Weaver’s scientifically credentialed character) are more common here than the substance. We learn a bit about bioluminescence and a smattering of other things, but the material is so slight that we have to keep being reassured how scientifically authentic this imagined world is.

The more potent connection, though, is found in the immense technological apparatus used to create the movie. The state of the art was indeed being pushed forward by Mr. Cameron. As the exhibition explains, actors wore motion-capture suits with reflective spots that were filmed using 170 cameras from “every angle.” The gathered data yielded a computer-generated world.

It was then “filmed” by Mr. Cameron, who moved a “virtual camera” through that world, guided by a screen showing a mix of the real and the constructed. The images changed according to his positions and controls; he could select perspectives for the final movie as if a real camera were filming a real world.

Several years ago this was startling and clever, though it was realizing an approach familiar from video games. And you can play with a “virtual camera” here: its small screen shows scenes from Pandora, the image altering with the camera’s position. But this is really a simulation of a simulation; many similar effects are now reproducible on smartphones.

Another display promises that you can “act in a scene” from “Avatar” and post your performance on the Internet; it requires following instructions about where to move in a bare “performance space.” Your motions are recorded and superimposed on Pandora’s rain forest (or a poor imitation of it). My own screen test is as unwatchable as the experience was unenlightening.

And that is about it. We hear, again and again, in video interviews here, how much care went into the film, how a linguist was commissioned to create a language, how music was composed to evoke Na’vi culture. But in the end we are left with impressions not too different from what was created by prerelease publicity. (The DVD set has a more informative feature on the making of the movie.)

As for the film itself, it bears a peculiar relationship to this entire subject because it really is a political cartoon, without humor or nuance. American corporate, imperial and military types try to demolish a tribal culture with brute force; the natives ultimately repel the invaders through guerrilla warfare and their superior spiritual and ecological insight. Science and technology are depicted as filthy, noisy, intrusive and oppressive.

You won’t see that message in the science museum, nor is anything made of the paradox of using technology to scorn technology, which, like other attitudes in the film, combines self-righteousness with self-disgust. Taking the content more seriously, though, would have made the exhibition even more leaden than the movie’s message making.

Perhaps I should be thankful for the two things I learned. The first is that the mineral being strip mined on Pandora is called unobtanium, a word “used by engineers since the 1950s to refer to any substance with miraculous properties that would perfectly solve a tricky engineering problem — but doesn’t exist.”

And the second is that Na’vi phrase that I never thought would come in handy, but I was wrong. I can use it now. “Oeri nga kllkxem sìn kxetse!” It means “You’re standing on my tail!”